Loading summary
Transcript119 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, it's Bradley. How you doing? There is a minor audio problem for the first 90 seconds of this podcast. So please just bear with us, get through it, and it'll all then be cool. And I promise this will not happen again next week. Thanks. All right. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. It's a Tuesday episode, so with us is our friend and producer, Hugo Lindgren. Hugo, how you doing?
- [00:27]
B
I'm just going to open some water. A special look at that for the listeners.
- [00:33]
A
What do we got today?
- [00:34]
B
We got you talking about an essay you wrote. Sort of. It's actually, I think it's really about zero some people and the effect that they have on the rest of us, I think. So. I think that's the core of it. But it sort of, it starts in a slightly different place. But why don't we, when we start with that, we're going to talk about, obviously, some of the news stuff. After that, we're going to talk about the war a little bit. We're going to talk about, I want to, I want to go a little bit into the anthropic Pentagon situation. And then you have this sort of theory of the composite city that we're going to spend some time.
- [01:05]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [01:06]
B
So we're going to talk about that, too.
- [01:07]
A
All right. So, so here's the start. So this is the substack that's going up tomorrow or Tuesday, I guess. And it started I was at an event on Thursday in D.C. for a group called the Public Service Alignment alliance. And they are a nonprofit marketplace that is specifically meant to help former and current public servants who are under threat of violence just for doing their job. That could be the political assassinations that we've seen over the past couple of years. It could be judges getting threatened. It could be poll workers getting threatened. It could be you know, basically, really, it seems to now happen across the board in anything from someone providing a very basic governmental service to people making policy at a very high level. And there just was not a norm until relatively recently in this country. I mean, there are always been examples of political violence. You know, I don't know, half four or five presidents have been assassinated and more shot. So, like, it's not that that hasn't existed, but we seem to be in a world now where there's a notion you could obviously have social media and Trump both contribute to this, just sort of the general vibe that comes from it, which is, you know, if you don't like someone or something, violence is an acceptable solution to it. And because now with the prevalence of doxing and the ability to just find people's information pretty quickly through the Internet, there is a real epidemic now of it. And so PSA has built a marketplace run by this woman, Isabella, who's just. She was the deputy chief of staff at Homeland Security, incredibly talented. And what they do is they basically find ways to take the public servants who don't make much money under threat and help them. So they've convinced alarm service companies to provide it at a massive discount, they've convinced law firms to provide services at a massive discount, they've convinced places that can do data privacy. So all of that kind of stuff. But obviously the problem keeps growing. And so they had a small event in D.C. on Thursday and I was talking to where it started with Jim Murray, who was the head of the Secret Service Service under Trump. And he was at this meeting, he works at coreweave now. And because he was in government politics and then he was in tech, he's in tech now. The whole thing started because we were chatting before the event began, just about kind of the world of politics, the world of tech, and how they were less dissimilar than it might appear. And so I started writing it down. And so let's say you're graduating from college and you have two job offers. One is to work for an early stage tech startup and one is to work on a political career campaign. So the jobs on their face sound very different, but. But I think once you look at it, they're not. Right. So a political campaign centers around the candidate and the candidate is usually an ambitious, hard charging, charismatic person with a vision and a deep need for success and recognition. Right. An early stage tech startup centers around the founder, usually an ambitious, hard charging, charismatic person with a vision and a deep seated need for success and recognition. Political campaigns are often staffed by young, enthusiastic, energetic people who believe in the cause and think that success can result in some sort of meaningful societal change. Early stage tech startups are often staffed by young, enthusiastic, energetic people who believe in the cause and both want to make money, but also think the company's product can make people's lives better. They're both working towards a very specific goal. It's the election for the campaign, obviously it's the exit for the startup. They both have their own sets of media that focus just relentlessly on their success and their failure. They both raise money and they both see their donors and or investors as a huge pain in the ass. Poll numbers and growth Numbers mirror each other. Go to market and get out the vote. Do too. So there's a lot of similarities. And yet, in my experience, because I work in both of these worlds, each group often sees the other in the wrong light. Right. And there are stereotypes that I know are unfounded. Right. People who work in tech and in business are not fundamentally greedy or unethical or rapacious. And people who work in government and politics are not fundamentally dumb or lazy or corrupt. Those are just stereotypes that aren't even remotely true in most cases. And I've been lucky, I think, to see the world from some different perspectives. I've worked in tech, politics, government, media, retail, philanthropy. I've lived in different parts of the US the work we do across all of our different things here takes place across all 50 states. And so, and especially when you work in politics, you kind of deal with people from every background, at every level, every, everything. So when you put all that together, I think what I've learned is ultimately people are a lot more similar than they are different. In fact, a good example would be when you work in politics, you end up having, especially if it's in any sort of diverse city or anything like that, a really non intentional, diverse friend group of friends and colleagues, because you have to deal with everyone, right? And therefore political operations who are seeking votes from lots of different communities have people who are experts in the black community, different parts of the Latino community, Asian, gay, progressive women, whatever it might be. And even though there are differences between every human being, if at your heart you're a political operative, you have more in common with other political operatives, even if, by the way, they work on totally the other side from an ideological standpoint than you do with pretty much anyone else. And like, I could sit down with any political operative from anywhere and if everyone just dropped all the pretense and bullshit, have a really fun conversation for an hour? Almost.
- [07:01]
B
Well, that often happens.
- [07:02]
A
In fact, it often happens. Yeah. Right. So I just think people are ultimately more similar. They want the same things. They want to spend time with the people they love. They want to make a L and if possible, enjoy the work itself. They want to be healthy, they want to have fun, they want to be happy. Are there people that see life as every man for himself? Yes. Are there people who inherently see anyone else's gain as their loss? Yes. And look, some of those people, including our president, are very skilled at exploiting our anxieties and our fears and our superficial differences to pit us against each other and use that dissension to benefit themselves. But guess what? There are a lot more of us than there are of them. And we don't have to let them oppress us by constantly putting anyone they view as different or lesser on public trial. And we don't have to let them control public policy and we don't have to let them set our social norms. And while there are big fundamental reforms that could start to change this, like mobile voting or national service or whatever it might be, I think a lot of it can just get done through our own day to day actions. Just by displaying our own humanity, right? Just by having nice positive interactions with strangers. There's all kinds of studies that show that people who engage with strangers in positive ways are actually much happier than people who don't. Which is hard for me to hear because the truth is, I'm so inclined towards the latter. But the truth is, all the data.
- [08:28]
B
Have you tried to change that?
- [08:30]
A
Occasionally. And by the way, it's right, right? It's just not my nature to do it. But it is right. You can do it by volunteering, by attending religious services or community events or cultural events, being engaged at your kids school or you know, we're building this AI tool called how to Create Societal Change that will take regular people and show them, hey, you do want to change something in your community. You want to stop sign on the corner, you want to ban cell phones in your kids schools, whatever it is that requires legislative or policy or regulatory change, we're going to show you for free how to achieve that specific change in your specific community as well. But you know, I think whether it's being with other people or doing something directly in your community, or even trying to change the laws themselves, the key is accepting that the way to live a happier life and to build a better society is not by pointing fingers and condemning difference, but by realizing that we're almost all pretty similar. We love our kids, we love our friends, sometimes we even love our families. We want to feel peace, security, acceptance. And we want the world to keep getting better. And if we live that mentality as much as we can, we can take power away from the people that seek to enrich and power themselves by keeping us afraid. And I know that sounds a little fufu and kumbaya, but it's a lot better than the reality we're living in today. I mean, the world feels bad right now. It's scary. And in large part it's scary because the minority of people who see the world as zero sum have way too much power and influence and they maintain that power and influence by keeping us afraid. But it doesn't have to be this way. Right? We don't have to just accept things for the way they are. We don't have to just throw up our hands and feel hopeless. There's a better world. I can see it. It's right there in front of us. It's right there for the taking. And we have the tools and we have the technology and I believe we have the human decency to do it. And sure, it's going to take work and courage and sacrifice and it's going to take time and a lot of failure and requirements require a lot of resilience. But I know we can do one and maybe even more important, like I am certain it would be worth it.
- [10:34]
B
So where does this power of zero sum people come from? Exactly? Like if, if it's, if it's a small minority of people, why are they so much driving.
- [10:45]
A
Their will is structural, which would be the systems that we have built really encourage their extremism. Right. So because of gerrymandering, primaries only matter in over 90% of elections. Primary turnout tends to be really low, especially in down ballot races. And the people at the extremes are smart enough to realize that if they show up and they get their people to show up, they can gain power without really having to persuade the vast majority of the population that they're right. Because you don't need the vast majority to win a primary for state senate or city council or honestly really anything other than president most of the time. So they get it that way. They get it through social media, which completely encourages an award to people who are the loudest. Right. It doesn't matter if what you're saying is smart or decent or right. If you are really loud and you can tap into people's fear and anxiety and frustration, you can generate a lot of support and attention and, and then that in and of itself generates media coverage. It just, it becomes a network effect almost and it just kind of keeps growing and growing. And so there are just so many different ways that people are able to sort of game our institutions to gain power, even though they're not really ultimately having to convince a majority of the people.
- [12:10]
B
So do you think you sort of set these off as two different groups, the sort of majority of normal people and then this sort of minority of zero sum kind of thinkers? Yeah, but people do toggle back and forth to some extent. And I'm curious if you've ever felt personally yourself like in a particular type of situation or context where you become different.
- [12:34]
A
Sure. I mean, I can be different based on a situation. Right. I can be different how it plays on me emotionally. I can, I could be different because, look, just in my own day to day work, I could see where, if you wanted to say this is logically consistent, you could. So on one hand, I think a lot of what we do is pretty disruptive in a good way, and we're blowing lots of systems up and that could be legalized and disruptive technologies and tech or changing the way that we do democracy or any of the stuff that we do. At the same time, a lot of it is done to actually take the institutions that we have and make them more centrist and moderate, make them more trustworthy, make them more representative of the mainstream in the whole. So in a way, you know, you could argue that we're tearing stuff down in order to build it back up in a way that serves the greatest good. And look, whether it's mobile voting or the adequate societal change, like none of that is being done in a way to then yield specific policy outcomes. Right. Societal change tool is not going to say, oh, we're not going to give you a campaign plan for that because Bradley doesn't agree with that policy position. Right. Mobile voting, the idea is to empower lots and lots just to power people as much as possible. And I believe that over the long haul that will get you a greater electorate, which yields therefore more mainstream politics and policies, but doesn't mean that I will agree with that policy on any given issue. There are issues where I have views that are in the extremes on either side. So I do think that it will, it will vary for sure.
- [14:17]
B
You started out, you talked about the paths, sort of political path versus the startup path. You started out obviously in politics and that's kind of left an imprint on you. How do you think it'd be different if you'd gone into tech first? Like, would it. Would your, Would your mind work a different way? Like, what's the sort of.
- [14:35]
A
I don't think I would have been able to do what I died.
- [14:39]
B
You needed to be in politics to just.
- [14:41]
A
I needed to understand. What you could argue is, I believe that I fundamentally understand politics. Right. I've been working in and around politics since 1992 and I. It's been the vast, vast. It's been my entire adult life and I do feel like I understand the underlying nature of it, which then allows me to be involved in it in lots of different ways and lots of different levels of government, lots of different sectors, whatever else, law firm jurisdictions, and I can do it. And I know enough about tech to make it work. If I started in tech, I would certainly know a lot more about tech and maybe I would have been a more conventional venture capitalist. Right. But the reality is I'd be a different person because my interest is how you use the scale and scope of government to achieve meaningful societal change and have a impact on lots and lots of people. Like that has always been the underlying focus of my life since I was a little kid. And you know, it probably is derived from two things. It's derived from one, a genuine desire to try to do good and make my life mean something. And it's driven by deep insecurity and need for recognition and affirmation and to feel safe. And you put those things together and that has sort of been the motivating throughput for me for my entire life, which meant politics and government inherently attracted me. You can have really, really big impact and scope through tech too, obviously. I guess if I had that same underlying view and driving and motivation, but somehow was in tech specifically, I guess it would have been around trying to build products that really impacted the greatest number of people.
- [16:38]
B
Mandatory service comes up a lot as something you're interested in and feel like is a, like a, would be a net positive for the society. What are the politics of actually making like a national mandatory service?
- [16:52]
A
It's really hard.
- [16:54]
B
Is it harder than mobile voting? Is it the same?
- [16:56]
A
No, because it doesn't necessarily put the power of the people currently in power at risk. Right. And so mobile voting is scarier.
- [17:05]
B
Right.
- [17:05]
A
But at the same time there is, because the people, the people who control society today are much more zero sum than the population as a whole. If you are a zero sum person, the underlying value of national service is probably not going to make sense to you because the point of it isn't even that you have a more efficient whatever because you're getting all this mandatory labor. The point is that when, when people experience firsthand that when they do things that are useful for others but not themselves, they personally benefit far greater than they would if they just did things that were selfish. Right. What you have to believe is that if all of behavioral economics, economists and all of the people who study happiness are right and that meaning and purpose is one of the sort of two things that really drives human happiness. And if meaning and purpose typically comes from usually doing something for somebody else. Right. Then the underlying thesis that I hold is that the most selfish and positive thing you can do for yourself, the greatest way to improve the quality and happiness of your own life is to use the resources that you have, whether it's time or money or anything else, to try to do tangible things for others. Not because you care about being a good person, but because it maximizes your own feelings of value and self worth. And to me, if that basic equation could be better understood, people would make different choices and leave happier lives. But we're a little bit of a catch 22 where if we have a system designed and built to elect people who effectively are zero sum by nature, the notion that they would fundamentally understand the point of what I'm trying to get across here and then choose to take on political pain in some ways to accomplish it is really low.
- [19:04]
B
Speaking of zero sum, I guess it's a good segue into Talk about the war a little bit. I wanted to ask you. You said this in other contexts. I actually don't know how seriously you meant it. But you've said that the Midd east is one area where Trump's instincts might actually work. Are you seeing evidence of that in the way the war has been going, or do you feel like that is just an observation?
- [19:29]
A
We don't inherently have a problem with the war itself. Meaning I really do think Trump thinks like leaders in the Middle east think. I think that's how his brain works and therefore I think it is a place where I trust his instincts far more than I would in most other areas because he does get them in a way that your normal over intellectualized U.S. president or policy advisor or whatever do not. Right? So that's good. And again, I still think a week and change later, that if you're telling me that one of the most murderous dictators in the world is now dead and a lot of the people I know, his son was just anointed Supreme Leader, but. And if a lot of the people who are around him are dead and if we further eroded Iran's nuclear capabilities, that's good, right? That's a good thing for the world. So then the question is, what happens next? The logical thing from a substantive and policy and political perspective would be finish up what you're doing and get out. Don't put troops on the ground, don't try to nation build. Just you did what you did because you felt like there was real security threat to America and you felt like the Iranian people were being oppressed in a way that needed to be adjusted or corrected. You did it, you accomplished it. Great. Get out. If you stay, a few things will Happen one is the economic impact gets worse and worse every day because if the Strait of Hormutz is closed and tankers can't get through, gas prices, home heating prices, everything else surge, stock market crashes as it has been, and all of that means the economy is suffering, which I think Trump generally, I don't know that he really cares about the long term economy because we talked this podcast before, some of his choice. So many of his choices are antithetical, if you wanted, about the strong long term economy. But I do think he cares a lot about the performance of the stock market and it really is undermining that, number one. Number two, if Vance did throw out the notion of a draft, that is not gonna play well with the vast majority of people who might vote in November, in the midterms. And so it seems like a crazy
- [21:47]
B
thing for him to say.
- [21:48]
A
Yeah. So if you put all that together politically, it really doesn't make sense to stay. So unless you think there's something else motivating Trump that we just don't know about at all, it would logically make sense for them to get out in the next week or two or three, but it's Trump, so who knows?
- [22:07]
B
And just leave the current leadership in place.
- [22:09]
A
I mean, what, I mean, you could try to kill this guy over the next couple of weeks, but at the end of the day, like, I don't think we can be in charge of who leads every country. Look, if they didn't. Trump said that his instinct was that Iran was more likely to attack proactively than not. Of course he has to say that. But again, if there's an area where I think his instincts might actually prove to be decent, I think it might be this area. So therefore I'm still of the view that they've got about two or three weeks at most left to sort of wind this thing down and get out. If they do. I don't even think it's going to be a success politically because I think it's just people are going to forget about it long before November, but if they don't, then it will start to be a real liability.
- [22:58]
B
Rubio, shortly after the attack started, said that Israel had kind of led us into this. He immediately had to walk that back. The President contradicted him.
- [23:08]
A
Not sure what he gets out of that.
- [23:09]
B
What, what was, what was happening there?
- [23:11]
A
What, what was that? I mean, maybe it is as simple as, again, I don't know. This is purely speculating. So Team Rubio and his team are endlessly trying to game out the votes in a Republican presidential primary in 2028. Right. And maybe they think that the pro Israel lobby is not available to them as supporters. They think Pants has it locked up, they think somebody else has it locked up. And therefore there's a huge swath of MAGA and others who hate Jews and who want to blame Israel for everything. And so perhaps he was courting those voters, or maybe it's just what he believes to be true. And he said it, and he probably shouldn't have, but, you know, he just said, do I think that people have learned how to successfully flatter and manipulate Donald Trump to doing what they want? Yes. Is it possible Netanyahu's doing that?
- [24:02]
B
Sure. What is your personal level of fear? So we've talked about the political implications and where this leaves Trump, but just in terms of the well being of our country of Israel, what are your. Do you have deep fears about this conflict kind of spinning out of control?
- [24:24]
A
No.
- [24:24]
B
You don't?
- [24:24]
A
I don't. What I. What I might. I believe that there are three to four existential risks for humanity. We discussed nuclear war, a bioweapon being produced and released that is as transmissible as Covid was, but much, much, much more deadly. Right. Covid was highly transmissible, but unless you had a preexisting condition or refused to get vaccinated, you probably weren't going to die from it. But I'm sure things already exist that are far more lethal than that. Climate change. Probably not that it's going to wipe out all of society, but, you know, there are a lot of estimates that say that half a billion to a billion people, mainly in kind of the Global south, will die from extreme heat and things like that, even if they're overstated and cut in half. A quarter of a billion to half a billion people still fucking, you know, catastrophic. Catastrophic. And the fourth would be the notion of sort of AI rising up the subject of humans. I'm not particularly worried about that one. But the number one is nuclear. I do believe that in some ways the greatest single accomplishment of humanity has been that for 80 years now we have had nuclear weapons and not use them. Right. Truman used them. You can debate whether or not he should have to end World War II, but we're up to, I think nine different countries now have nuclear weapons. And amazingly, no one has used them, I think, because ultimately they all realized they would come back to kill them. So even Kim Jong Un, however, as that list grows from 9 to 12 to 15 to 25 or whatever it is, you can't count on that rational behavior of the consequences of using weapons of mass destruction to work with everyone. And Iran is certainly a place that seems to not worry about that. And so as you have more and more countries or non state actors gain access, I do think you're going to have to be more and more aggressive in taking away their access because you can't count on them to just make the right decisions. And once a nuclear missile is launched at another country, who the fuck knows what's going to happen?
- [26:35]
B
Last week we talked about the sort of anthropic Pentagon standoff we sort of talked about just in advance of the news. But you predicted exactly what would happen, which was the Pentagon would declare Anthropic a supply chain threat. The news since then is that OpenAI has kind of stepped into the breach. There's been some internal conflict there in terms of people who work there objecting to them agreeing to the Pentagon's demands. Is this story essentially over? Where does it leave anthropic or in general like our ideas about safeguarding AI?
- [27:17]
A
And so there's, there's one is the reality of what's going to happen with the platforms and the government and then the other are the perceptions of the platforms. Right. So the reality is DoD is still using Claude. And from the people that I've talked to in our security world, getting out of it is not so easy. Right. I guess the plan is to phase out of cloud over the next few months and then OpenAI steps in and fills the void. Maybe that's gonna be possible, but nothing's ever as easy as you think, so maybe not. So the first thing is Anthropic may not actually be going anywhere anytime soon, despite what Trump and Hegseth and others are saying. Right. Number two would be the perception game. And I certainly understand the logic behind Anthropic's position. Right. For what is a relatively small amount of money, $200 million in the context of their world, they have now been the only AI company to proactively stake out a reputation of someone that has some level of integrity and beliefs compared to the others. And given that AI is inherently unpopular, being able to distinguish yourself from everyone else makes sense. OpenAI seems to keep just embracing the role as the heel. If this was like a wrestling match, like they'd be the bad guy. And they did it yet again. Now I guess their view is just revenue is revenue and it doesn't matter where it comes from. And you know, it's funny, I've been thinking about this in the larger context of like the data centers we've talked about before, which is if you're the hyperscalers, like you understand how the systems work, right? You understand that in order to use the current chips from Nvidia or Intel or AMD or someone to power AI, that there's incredible energy consumption. In fact, there are at least estimates that say that if every data center planned came online, US energy consumption would double. And assuming that supply didn't change meaningfully, which is generally a safe assumption, if demand doubles and prices stay flat, prices double, Right? So even if it doesn't double, but if electricity bills for people in your data centers go up 30, 40%, it seems impossible to me that no one in those meetings didn't realize, hey, this is going to happen and it's going to be a political problem because who's going to be willing to pay all that extra just for us, right? And maybe they were so arrogant that they thought we're saving the world with AI and therefore every negative externality is fine because everyone understands how important we are. But I don't believe that. Right. And I think that they're too smart for it to have not occurred to them. And I don't think they're so clueless just to believe that everyone would just embrace it. So they clearly had some plan in mind for what to do. And yet there are 37 states, I believe, that are currently looking at regulating data centers. And to the extent that the data centers have some sort of great political pushback, I haven't seen it. Right. I see OpenAI trying to intimidate individual politicians. Like they're running ads against Alex Boris, who's New York assemblyman, who's worked on AI regulation but now is running for the open seat that Jerry Nadler is vacating. I've seen anthropic run ads. So people run ads, the companies are running individual ads to try to intimidate and bully people. But I just don't see that as in any way a viable long term strategy. So I just don't get it.
- [30:57]
B
So you're legitimately confused on what they're doing?
- [30:59]
A
I just don't know how. Yeah, I feel like I'm just missing a piece of data. I don't know how they couldn't have seen this all coming. And I don't see what they're really doing to respond to it. And I feel like there's some underlying viewer assumption. The only one that makes sense to me is that they thought that they were so rich and so powerful that they could just bully their way through anything.
- [31:19]
B
But this is where a lot of tech companies used to be, right? I mean, this is a like, oh, we don't actually need to play politics.
- [31:25]
A
Take Uber. So we're considered like the most disruptive example of regulation. Right? We did what we did because we didn't have money, right? The tax industry had money. We didn't. What we had were people who really liked our product.
- [31:39]
B
Right.
- [31:39]
A
We were able to mobilize.
- [31:40]
B
So it's like the inverse.
- [31:41]
A
And, you know, we've seen that and worked on that here, you know, in stuff like sports betting, scooters, weed delivery, crypto. I mean, there are industries where people will fight for it because they really are passionate about it, but people are not excited about AI, Right. I don't think anyone's fighting for Claude, you know, and their odds are slightly better now. This whole thing happened in D.C. and
- [32:04]
B
they're not fighting for Claude because they just look at it as a sort of a thing that business is going to use to crush everybody.
- [32:10]
A
I think they're worried about job loss. I saw polling that showed that two out of every three Americans think that AI is far more likely to lose jobs and start jobs, which I think will end up proving true wrong statistically in the long term. But that might not be for a couple of decades, right? There were electricity costs they're worried about. You know, some people are worried about actual safety and AI. You know, Some people worry about things like AI being used for mass surveillance or some things that anthropic objected to. So overall, I just don't think the idea that you're able to sort of turn on your users to win this fight is at all realistic or smart. And so if you don't have that, that's the real advantage tech had, right? Right now, I guess what you could try to do is do what the tech, social media companies have done to preserve Section 230. But that is a something happening just in one place. Just Congress right here. We're talking every state, cities, very different playing field, number one. Number two, while you have individual parents who have certainly, and you know, I would say kids, but they can't vote, who have lived the harm of social media. It's still more episodic compared to they're not organized in the way that, like, everybody pays the electric bill, right? So like they're also 100% of America, right? So like one way or another. So like, so I just think that even if they try the intimidation, because they are so Rich front. I think the dynamics where it has worked are very different. The dynamics here. Yeah.
- [33:54]
B
Do you want to talk about your composite city?
- [33:57]
A
Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I don't have an answer to it, but I was just thinking about, like, now this is partially inspired
- [34:03]
B
because you've been spending more time in Miami.
- [34:04]
A
So a little bit, but a bit now. It was. That was just only because you. You went off on Miami last time. We were texting about it, so I defended Miami, but. But it was more. The point of. I feel like I was wondering is if you took the criteria of, I want a city where I can reach my potential professionally, no matter how ambitious they are. I am. I want good weather, I want good culture. And that can mean a lot of different things. Right. It can mean intellectually, it could mean food, it could mean sports. It could also just mean bars or the way people engage with each other or anything else. I want kind of an inherent energy in the city, but I also don't want a vibe where everyone is acting ultra stressed out all of the time.
- [34:53]
B
I want highly. New York is actually like that in the United States.
- [34:55]
A
All right. Maybe.
- [34:56]
B
Is there another city where people act stressed out?
- [34:58]
A
San Francisco. Oh, yeah. And so I think there's a layer of calm that is sort of performative, but I don't think it's really there. Okay. And then quality of life. Right. So you take those six things. The question is just like, is there any city that can deliver on all six of them? And if not, whether it's in the US or abroad, who comes closest? I actually think LA is still the. Is the answer.
- [35:23]
B
Yeah.
- [35:24]
A
In that, you know, the weather's great, you know that when you say culture and you mean stuff to do, it's unquestionably true. Right. It's certainly the peak professional opportunity still. If you're in entertainment, not true for any other sector, but every other meaningful sector has big operations in Los Angeles. Right. You can still work in it. Right.
- [35:50]
B
You. How much different would it be for you if you just were based in LA in terms of, like, how you did your job?
- [35:57]
A
I think it would have been different if I'd started there. I think if now I go start spending a few months there, it won't change anything. Okay.
- [36:05]
B
You're just on the phone and whatever.
- [36:06]
A
It doesn't matter. Right. And then in terms of quality of life, in many ways LA is quite good. Right. But you do have some real negatives. I mean, you certainly have the traffic, which is a massive negative, and you have the Environmental, physical, risk of hurricanes and wildfires and all of that.
- [36:24]
B
And if not hurricanes, but yeah, I'm sorry, wildfires.
- [36:26]
A
Wildfires and earthquakes. And then you have the. Depending on where you are, you know, massive homeless population and crime and everything else, but nonetheless it's still relatively high. And then an environment that's not stressful. I get the sense that people, entertainment are pretty stressed right now especially. Yeah. I mean, they might act. I think LA certainly has a vibe that is much more laid back. But I wonder that once you're actually engaging in any industry at the highest levels and you happen to doing so in L. A, if it's any different. I'm not sure.
- [37:05]
B
I doubt it is.
- [37:05]
A
Right.
- [37:06]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think the high stress levels at the top of the entertainment industry are as intense as anywhere.
- [37:12]
A
Right. So the question is, if you work in a law firm or an investment bank or something else in la, are you less stressed than your counterparts in New York? Yes, yes. Okay.
- [37:20]
B
I think, I think the, the general, the general professions in LA outside the like, because I think people live there for the.
- [37:28]
A
Are they achieving the same levels they would reach in New York?
- [37:31]
B
Probably not.
- [37:31]
A
Okay, so that's the trail, that's the trade off. Yeah. And then energy, inherent energy. We know New York has it the most. The most. Do you think any other city in America really does have it?
- [37:41]
B
I mean, I find that's the thing about visiting other cities is that they typically feel underwhelming in that, you know, even. I mean, I love LA and I love spending time there. But like, it definitely, it definitely has a vacant feel.
- [37:53]
A
There are areas like. So Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, they feel like there's energy there, I think.
- [37:59]
B
Yes, but like Sunset Boulevard, you just like drive.
- [38:00]
A
It may not be where you want to, but when you're out there walking around, there's Chicago going on. I feel like if you're. I think it's an energy to the tech sector.
- [38:10]
B
Okay.
- [38:12]
A
I feel like Miami has some energy created by the diversity of the city, which is real. You know, Vegas is a totally artificial energy, but it has it. But you're right, the only city where when you just walk around and you feel it sort of pulsating is New York.
- [38:28]
B
And it's spontaneity. I think that's the biggest thing in
- [38:30]
A
the U.S. like, I've been places like Shanghai that have it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we're just talking American recommendations.
- [38:37]
B
Well, I just want to bring up people up to speed. I know that, I know that there's been just Tons of, tons of concern. But I wanted to revisit quickly your, your prediction bets.
- [38:45]
A
Yeah.
- [38:46]
B
I just want you to know. So you made a total of $2.44 of bets when we, when we did it.
- [38:51]
A
Yeah.
- [38:52]
B
You were up 3 cents.
- [38:54]
A
3 cents.
- [38:54]
B
Your best bet, by the way. I'm just going to quickly do this. We'll check in from time to time. But you took Rubio as the Republican nominee at 19 cents.
- [39:02]
A
Yeah.
- [39:02]
B
And he's up to 24 cents. So that's looking like your best bet. The other thing that is working in your favor, you shorted Oklahoma City for NBA championship and they were at 41 cents. They're now down to 38, sort of lose crown. So that's a 3 cents gain for you.
- [39:20]
A
Great.
- [39:21]
B
Because you shorted Detroit. However, you, you took long. They were at nine, now they're at six. So you, you canceled yourself out there and you took the Democrats to win the house at 81 cents. They're now up to 84 cents. Okay, so you're.
- [39:36]
A
Which one am I not up more overall?
- [39:38]
B
So the reason you're not up more overall, best picture, you took one battle after another that went from 78 to 74. So that went down. AOC dropped slightly to be the Democratic nominee, and that's it. So that's why you're up 3.
- [39:53]
A
But I'm not predicting that she'll be the nominee. I'm predicting.
- [39:55]
B
No, no.
- [39:56]
A
You like the bet. The bet.
- [39:57]
B
You like the bet. Yeah, no, I mean, that's, I think that's true with all these things. Is that, is that, I mean, partially, like, like I was looking at one battle after another. So that went down slightly. But I still say it's like it's the, it's, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll make 26 cents on that from, from this position now if it wins. And I still think it's still very likely to win. So the one thing I was going to ask you about, so I was, I looked into the sort of SAVE act, you know, the president's sort of voting thing, where they're going to try to strip away all the mail in ballots and they want. You have a voter ID and whatever else, this whole kind of like compression of the voting pool. So that's a yes passage at 14% and a no at 86. Do you like either one of those positions or what's your.
- [40:42]
A
I mean, I guess, look, if somehow you were to get it through, it would have to be a 100% party line. Vote, which is technically possible, but you'd have cloture in the Senate. So I'm not sure where you find those seven Democrats on that issue. And then in the House.
- [40:58]
B
Well, it's past the House twice, I think.
- [41:00]
A
Right? Yeah. But now if you had to do it again, I think that you would have Republicans who are running scared, and if they thought it would hurt them in November, if they are in a swing district, you just have enough or for whatever reason in their primary, that probably would only help them in a Republican primary. You know, just if you lot, you just can't lose much at this point.
- [41:19]
B
Point.
- [41:19]
A
Right, right, right. So that's all. So I would. I'd vote no.
- [41:22]
B
So you. You take the. The no at $0.86 if I force you into position.
- [41:25]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [41:26]
B
All right. So let's talk about your recommendation.
- [41:28]
A
I know I'm supposed to do one, but it's been a few weeks since I've had once. I have three.
- [41:31]
B
Oh, my God.
- [41:32]
A
So one, there's a TV show on Netflix called Vladimir, and what it looks like is a total romance thing. It's a dark comedy, and it's with.
- [41:41]
B
Not about Vladimir Putin.
- [41:42]
A
No, it's like a love. It's about a New England college town and these two professors in English, the English Department, who are. They were like the ick couple on campus. And they're still very attractive. Rachel Weitz is the lead of the show, and she's probably in her 50s now. In real life, she still looks great. And then the husband has been accused rightfully of sleeping with tons and tons of students. So he's kind of on his career is kind of falling apart. She's still been successful, but gets caught up in some of his because they have an open marriage issues. But the main thing is the new version of them comes to campus, a professor named first named Vladimir and his wife Cynthia. And they're both professors in English as well, and they're super attractive. They've got issues. Obviously, Rachel Weitz falls for Vladimir, and then the whole show was kind of partly a psychological drama, but it's more of a dark comedy that gets progressively fucking crazier with every episode.
- [42:44]
B
Have you seen all of it?
- [42:45]
A
Yeah. Okay, so I enjoyed it.
- [42:47]
B
I'm gonna watch that. That's a good recommendation.
- [42:48]
A
Two would be a novel called One of Us by Elizabeth Day. It's really about the rise and fall of a British politician and his family. And it's about class and wealth and all the usual stuff. I thought it was really well done. And the third would be if you're in New York, come to New York. I went to the Whitney Biennial on Saturday and just open and it was, I thought it was really good. I thought I don't like, you know, the only way I know is effectively as close to a gallery in some ways as a big major established museum is going to get. Because it's saying here is the best work, the most interesting work that we think is happening in contemporary art today. It could be an older artist, younger artist, but it's still a new work, I believe. And so it's impossible that you are going to like all of it. But I thought there were, you know, of the two floors, a few things I saw that I thought were absolutely amazing and so that made it worth it alone. And then a whole bunch of other things I thought were at least pretty good and some I didn't like. But overall, if you like contemporary art, I thought the Woody bio was worth going to Cool.
- [43:53]
B
Thanks for having thank you
- [43:57]
A
Firewalls recorded in my book store PNT Knitwear, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley Firewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substack@bradleytus substack.com thanks again for listening.